saudade
by aetherling
Summary: In which a post-Twitch Plays Pokemon Red loses all memory of himself and wakes up in Kalos. Many years after his championship, Green studies abroad in Kalos and runs into a familiar face. Namelesshipping (Red/Green)


**Title**: saudade

**Author**: aetherling

**Fandom**: Twitch Plays Pokemon + Pokemon gameverse

**Rating**: PG

**Characters/Pairings**: Red/Green

**Summary**: In which post-TPP Red loses all memory of himself and wakes up in Kalos. Many years after his championship, Green studies abroad in Kalos and runs into a familiar face.

**Warnings**: Much, _much_ later on, there will be spoilers for X/Y's plot.

**Disclaimer**: For the sake of fiction, the following is not an accurate representation of medical conditions/hospital protocol. I did my best with research but as with all stories, some suspension of disbelief is needed.

**Author's Note**: Extensive knowledge of TPP lore is not required. If all you know is "thousands of people on the internet played Pokemon Red and started worshipping a fossil", you're good. If you didn't, now you know.

This fic hasn't been beta'd, so apologies for typos I've missed. Also Green is going to take his time showing up. Grab popcorn or something.

saudade

1.

He doesn't really notice the girl at first. She was always hidden within the folds of her mother's dress, looking down at the ground, silent and unassuming.

They come in once a week. The mother always looks tired when they leave.

That's as much as he knows.

* * *

They visit more often nowadays. Sometimes two days in a row. Sometimes with more people. They talk all at once to the mother in an unfamiliar language and he has to leave the room. His head hurts. He doesn't know why.

The girl looks up as he's leaving and catches his eye.

She says nothing. Neither does he.

Some time later, he realizes he understands the conversations held between the girl and her mother. But only when they're alone. The mother asks how school was, and the girl answers under her breath.

"Horrible."

The mother purses her lips and says nothing.

* * *

He asks his nurse, "Who is that family? They come here everyday."

The nurse, unfamiliar with his language, tries her best to answer. "Mom and Dad is famous Pokemon trainers. One daughter, 12 years old. Come all the way from Vaniville Town. Dad have problem, stay in hospital."

At his request, she handed him a tourist map. "Vaniville here," she says, pointing to a town in the southernmost region. "And we here," her finger trails up until it lands on a large city in the very center of the map.

"South Central Luminose Hospital."

* * *

"Hi," he says one day to the girl. "Um, I see you a lot." He's not sure how to start a conversation, but he's certain he's doing it wrong already.

The look she gives him confirms his suspicions.

"Do I know you?"

"Oh, um, no," he says. Now what? He's already frustrated with his inability to say the right thing and it's only 10 in the morning.

"Why aren't you speaking French? Everyone in Kalos speaks French."

"I don't know how." He gives a self-deprecating laugh. "Do you mind teaching me?"

She stares at him for a while, and he can't meet her eyes. He looks at her mouth instead, her lips pursed just like her mother's.

Then all of a sudden she says, "_Je m'appelle Serena._"

"Come again?"

"Just repeat after me."

"Je m'appelle Serena," he tries. The words feel so unfamiliar on his tongue.

"No, Serena is my name. Say it with your name," she says, breaking out into a smile. He's suddenly delighted and excited; he's never made anyone smile before. But his happiness dissipates just as quickly when he realizes, and he shakes his head.

"I don't know my name."

He laughs again. It doesn't make anything better.

* * *

Serena comes to the hospital almost daily now. The nurse says her father's condition is getting worse. Her mother walks in tight-lipped with bags under her eyes.

But Serena does not talk about her father.

"Still don't remember your name yet?" she asks him.

"No."

He hates feeling this way, being unable to recall something as simple as his own name. Sometimes he will wander into the courtyard, and he'll sit in between the green bushes with little red buds, but no matter how hard he concentrates -

Nothing.

"What about where you came from?"

Last visit she brought a map along, bigger and fancier than the one from the nurse. He knew it was the map of the world, and at least he could identify major countries.

He just doesn't know where his home is.

"Maybe you came from mommy's hometown," she said. "We speak the same language, after all."

She put her finger over a region called Sinnoh, but then she added, "But lots of other places speak the same thing." Her finger pointed to Johto, Kanto, Hoenn, and many more. "And lots of people speak it in different countries as a second language. They talk funny though."

"Anything come up?" she asked him. He had shook his head. It didn't matter who was asking - the doctors, the nurses, the hospital staff, Serena - it's always the same answer he's given since he woke up in the hospital.

But they don't always talk about him. Serena talks a lot about herself - about school, how boring it is and how she'd rather be playing with Pokemon, and about her summers as a research assistant in Luminose, and how she gets to do cool stuff with Pokemon when she's there, and even how unbearable the heat can be sometimes but it's still worth every minute.

He likes listening to her ramblings ("One time, I followed a Combee, and it flew up a tree, and it landed on a flower, and it landed on another flower, and it landed on another flower…") because he likes to think maybe he had a childhood like hers.

Then there are some days he thinks he's trying to not remember.

The nurse once mentioned, traumatic memories can be subconsciously repressed as a coping mechanism for the brain.

He doesn't want to remember bad memories but he still wants to remember.

He still wants to know even if he doesn't want to know.

It is a complicated feeling.

Explaining all that to Serena was definitely out of the question.

* * *

He asks his nurse where she thinks he came from. "Not here," she says obviously.

Before he's put through another CT scan, she adds, "But they find you in ocean."

* * *

The courtyard flowers have finally bloomed and Ledyba began to swarm the bushes. The muscles in his right hand itched to move but he's not sure what he wants to do.

He touches his face.

He touches his waist.

He grabs at air.

Nothing happens.

* * *

Serena's mother comes in with red puffy eyes and a nice dress. Serena is dressed nicely too. They stay in her father's room for a very long time.

"They say goodbye," the nurse told him.

He wonders if he too, left behind a family.

He wonders if they grieved for him.

Still, nothing comes to mind.

* * *

The day starts off warmer than usual but he feels fine otherwise. Right after lunch he's walking to the courtyard when he collapses in the hallway.

When his temperature won't stop climbing, they wheel him into the emergency room and connect him with so many tubes and monitoring devices that in his delirium, he believes he's more machine than man.

Everyone's speaking all at once. The words "hospital-acquired infection" are tossed around a lot.

His head is pounding again, harder than ever.

The heat makes everything ten times worse.

He's given more injections than he can count in his current state of mind.

Letters rush by so fast; he can't make any sense of them.

He can't see color anymore.

He can only feel his body burn.

_I am fire_, he thinks, before his vision completely fades.

* * *

It takes him longer after regaining consciousness to become aware of his surroundings. He was no longer in the emergency room, but in the recovery ward. On the table to his right, his official medical records lay open with writing everywhere, save for the box for his name. But on his hospital wristband, someone wrote "Felix?" in rushed letters.

"What happened? How did I get this?" He holds up his wrist. The nurse approaches him cautiously.

"You kept screaming. Is hard to understand. Doctor think he heard name."

"Felix?" He read aloud.

It was indeed a name. It just didn't feel like it was his.

"Means 'lucky'. Lucky you live." The nurse shrugs. "Maybe is not your real name. But better than nothing, no?"

Better than nothing.

He decides he will try being Felix for now.

"What else did I say?"

"Mostly screaming, very hard to understand." She shakes her head, and he sees how worn her face looks. Immediately he feels bad for not being more aware of his nurse's own condition, and he's wondering how to politely dismiss her when she continues.

"We try to keep you alive, we did not pay attention. You made no sense. Later we not sure if you keep saying 'Lord Felix' or 'Lord Helix'. But we write 'Felix' down for you."

He lets her exit the room.


End file.
